Stop All Clocks
by CheleSedai
Summary: A part of Lisa knows that it isn't supposed to be like this. AU for S4 episode 2010.


**Title **Stop All Clocks  
**Fandom(s) **Stargate SG-1, The Tomorrow People (New Series)  
**Timeline **Takes place in an AU 'verse during (and after) the events of the Stargate SG-1 season four episode, "2010." So, definitely spoilers for that episode. Takes place many years after the final serial of The Tomorrow People, "The Living Stones."  
**Summary **A part of Lisa knows that it isn't supposed to be like this.  
**Disclaimer **The characters featured here do not belong to me. They are the property of MGM, Gekko Productions, Roger Price, Thames/Tetra Television, ITV, and Nickelodeon. Used here without permission but not for profit.

Lisa wears Daniel's favorite shirt to sleep. She makes a point not to wash it because it smells like him: spicy and sharp mingled with the must of books and knowledge. When she's cocooned inside of it and drowning in the smell of him, she feels safe and everything feels right again.

When she dreams, a little part of her screams that it isn't supposed to be like this.

* * *

They have a quiet breakfast. Quiet because Lisa doesn't really want to talk about it and Daniel does and the only way to not argue about it is simply to not talk at all.

Except that with Daniel it never really is that simple or that easy, and not talking is never an option.

"Lisa." When Daniel speaks his voice is soft enough, sweet enough and just this side of warm and gentle enough that she could almost be swayed into thinking that this was just another morning, just another random daily discussion. But this isn't, she knows it and pretending won't make it any different. "I really wish that you'd reconsider and come with me."

Lisa looks up from her eggs, meets those brilliant blue eyes that can still make her breath catch eight years later and simply says, "No."

"Lisa." The gentle husband is gone, replaced by the man who negotiated hundreds of peace treaties with hundreds of alien worlds. It's a subtle shift, but one Lisa recognizes easily, the slight hardening of the eyes, the shifting in posture and voice that tells her that rather than arguing with her husband, she must now debate with the infamous Dr. Daniel Jackson.

Fortunately, eight years of marriage means Lisa can handle whatever Daniel throws at her.

"This is the ten year anniversary of our treaty with the Aschen. It isn't going to say a whole lot about our faith in this alliance if my own wife won't be there with me."

Lisa takes a deep breath, mostly to give herself time to think. It's about appearances, this ongoing drama they've been having for days. It's about the brilliant linguist who solved the mystery of the stargate, it's about the power and prestige of four people who's skill and wit and sometimes blind luck saved the world hundreds of times; this is about the man he was before she met him, and it's all about outward appearances. SG-1, the original, standing together strong and united because to pretend towards anything else is just blasphemy.

Because it's not like Daniel really sees Sam, or Teal'c or even Jack anymore. Sure, there are Christmas cards and summer barbecues, which usually feel more like a chore than a true reunion of friends. It's not the same anymore; they're not SG-1 anymore. And Daniel knows it, even if he won't admit it aloud.

"Is Jack going?" It's hitting just a little below the belt and Lisa knows it and for a fleeting moment she really hates that she's being so petty.

The eyes harden and tighten a bit more. There's a twitch in his jaw and Dr. Jackson clips, "I don't know."

He's lying and Lisa knows he's lying, and she knows that he knows that she knows; she wonders why he bothers at all. Really, she doesn't want to argue about this again. She can't go and he knows why, but it's another one of those things that they have this sad, circular dance about that never ends.

She releases the breath. "You know I can't go, Daniel."

"Can't or won't?"

There's a moment while she considers his question and her answer. She settles for a shrug, "Semantics."

It's enough of an answer. Daniel deflates, but only a little. His voice is softer, his eyes more gentle, but the negotiator is still lurking there. "You know that there's still no proof that the Aschen are responsible."

He's right and she admits it with a nod. There is no proof, none whatsoever that the Aschen, the magical saviors of humanity, are the reason that there are no new Tomorrow People. There's no proof that their medicines and skills, and their vaccines and wonders suppressed the ability for Tomorrow People to break out. No proof except for Adam's theories and bits of bio-techno babble that Megabyte's only been able to pull out piecemeal from the Aschen super-computers when he's lucky enough to hack into one. Nothing to go on, nothing to point fingers at because the Aschen are creative engineers and have even mastered the fine art of correcting mutations as if being a Tomorrow Person is some sort of pox upon humanity.

And maybe it is, because so many parents are having their children's mutations corrected when they do occur.

"There's no proof that they aren't."

"Lisa -"

"Daniel, please." She's pleading now because she's tired and she just doesn't want to argue about it anymore.

He nods and rubs his hands over his face. When he looks at her again, it's her husband and he's slightly contrite. Slightly because he's Daniel and he's brilliant and he thinks he's right, but he knows when to take a step back. He gives her a half-grin, full of his heart and she can't help but smile back.

"We'll have dinner when I get back. House of Hunan, all right?" It's a peace offering, his way of making up for the morning and the circular argument.

Lisa decides she'll forgive him because he's Daniel and she always does.

* * *

Daniel comes back a week later, two days later than he originally planned. Their reunion is brief; her husband is distant and though his lovemaking is quite thorough, Lisa knows that he's not really in the same room with her. Daniel's deep inside his head, trying to solve a problem, and Lisa tries to hide her hurt and disappointment at his relief that she'll be going off to visit Ami and Jade in London for a few days.

He's distracted, in full scientist mode, hauling out books and searching through journal entries of the days Before. Before their marriage, before the Aschen, when the world didn't know about the stargate. She could pry, but she won't, so she presses instead. In answer, he kisses her with words of love and affection and promises of shared secrets later, but the meaning is clear: he has to work this out, here and now and it will be easier if she's not distracting him.

Lisa realizes that she knows of this man, but she doesn't really know him. He's the shade of the man she fell in love with, and though she won't admit it, she finds it rather scary that the shade has reappeared after all these years.

"Maybe Teal'c brought back something interesting from one of the Jaffa worlds," Jade suggests, with a light in her eyes that tells her the speculation isn't just for Lisa's comfort. Jade Weston based her Master's thesis on the work of Dr. Daniel Jackson, and the two have a mentor-student relationship that Lisa is certain contributed to Jade being the scientist that she is today.

Jade's speculation doesn't do anything to settle the uneasiness that Lisa is feeling.

It's worse when Lisa returns home from London. Daniel has moved from determined to desperate and Lisa doesn't deny that it scares her more than a little. He's still calm on the outside, turning back into the soldier he was becoming before the Aschen came. He greets her with a warm hug and a kiss, and he holds her and strokes her hair when he asks about London. Yet there is an uncertain tension that hangs around him like a cloak; a desperation and sadness in his gaze when he looks at her and kisses her and touches her that makes it impossible for her to keep playing along and ignoring what's going on.

He knows that she is going to ask, but he doesn't allow it. Daniel whisks her off to the bedroom, where they make love with a fierce desperation that is as sensual and erotic as it is bittersweet and fearsome.

Later, in the afterglow, Lisa straddles him, capturing his face in her hands and forcing him to look at her. "Daniel, tell me what's wrong."

Her husband closes his eyes and she feels him turning inward, trying to reign in the emotions that she can't help but absorb from him – anxiety, fear, depression, loathing, guilt, desperation – and it only scares her all the more. When he opens his eyes, the mask is in place, shining blue eyes unclouded, but Lisa isn't fooled. She knows that what he is feeling is still there because she feels it too.

Daniel knows it too, because he does not try to lie to her. "What if I told you that you might be right? That Jack actually was right? That it's a mistake?"

The answer at its surface didn't make sense, but Daniel opens his mind to her, releasing a floodgate of thoughts and imagery that was nearly overwhelming in the unexpectedness of it all. Lisa shifts through, pulling it all together, bits and pieces and parts to make a whole of the past and present laid out so clearly before her.

The ultimate message startling in its clarity: The Aschen are trying to destroy them by wearing them down in a quiet war of attrition.

"We have to do something," Lisa rolls off of him, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. "We can't just let this happen. I have to go talk to the others –"

"Lisa." Daniel stops her with an arm around her waist, drawing her back down to the bed beside him. His arm is strong, warm, muscular – supportive and she finds it odd that he is now comforting her when only hours before he was nothing but a confusing bundle of emotions that could not be comforted. "Don't go to the others, not yet. Sam is working on a plan to fix this."

"Fix this? How do you fix this, Daniel? This isn't a broken machine or a misunderstanding about a treaty. This is --"

"Do you trust me?" His blue eyes are earnest and searching. His fingertips caress the length of her body, running absently from the curve of her breast to the round of her hip.

"I love you, Daniel."

"But right now, I need to know that you trust me, Lisa. And I need you trust me. Trust that this is something that I can do – that Sam and Teal'c and Jack and I can do. Can you give me that? Do you trust me?"

Despite her own fear and anger, and her need to do something, there is something in his voice and his touch that gives her pause.

She kisses him, "I trust you, Daniel."

"Then give me a week. And we will fix this."

She loves him, she trusts him, she believes him and most importantly, she doesn't pry. Because she knows that whatever plan is brewing is surely to be illegal and he's trying to protect her and protect earth in a way he hasn't done in nearly ten years.

When she kisses him goodbye a week later, she doesn't know that it is the last time she will see him alive.

* * *

The incident naturally made all of the news feeds. Political theorists, psychoanalysts and conspiracy theorists litter the airwaves throwing out their random ideas regarding what happened. Everyone thinks that they know what made the world's former and foremost "intergalactic heroes" give their own lives to activate the stargate.

The truth is, no one really knows. Even Lisa has no answers for her fellow Tomorrow People because she trusted her husband; she never knew that her blind trust involved the possibility of her being a young widow. She didn't know the plan and she is certain that Daniel never meant for her to know it, because if she had known the risk of fatality, she would never have allowed it; she and the others would have done everything to stop it.

Even five months later, she still has to avoid reporters and the curious and the morbid and the hateful. So she spends lots of time at the island, sitting in the sand with her hands stroking her swollen belly and feeling the tiny life growing inside of her. Lisa knows that this child is a victory against the Aschen – because she did take the anti-aging vaccine – but it doesn't erase the grief.

The ocean sings to her that this is all wrong and it isn't supposed to be like this.

One day, she will wake up and it will be different, better.

Lisa wishes she could believe that.

* * *

Lisa awakes suddenly in the cold, dark of the night and reaches for her husband. Except she remembers that he's dead, that he died trying to save the world again, but that thought isn't right at all. She has never been married and she lives alone in her three-bedroom apartment; the emptiness that she feels inside of her has never been filled because she has never been pregnant.

She shakes off the last clinging remnants of sleep, and gives a shaky giggle as she realizes that what is haunting her is a dream. A very vivid, very lucid dream, but a dream nonetheless. But it is a dream that haunts her and makes it impossible to go back to sleep immediately.

The island is peaceful and comforting, the sun just rising over the horizon, and Lisa digs her toes into the sand. The waves wash up and lap at the sand and she can almost swear that the ocean is whispering, "I told you so."

* * *

Twenty-eight levels beneath a mountain, Colonel Jack O' Neill sits at the base of the embarkation ramp, his team gathered around him as the CO of Stargate Command walks briskly from the gate room. All four faces are pensive and confused.

"I wonder why you sent it," Sam remarks quietly. "I wonder when."

"Yeah," Jack responds. "You gotta wonder."

-- End --


End file.
